Delusions of Grandeur

9

“Yes, I do have a plan,” Nolaa Tarkona said. “And I don’t think the humans will enjoy it very much.” When she smiled, her sharply filed teeth glinted like daggers in the dim light.

“All the better then,” remarked Adjutant Advisor Hovrak, a bristly faced wolfman who growled under his breath. He used a long claw to pick shreds of meat from along his gumline. A few fresh blood spatters on his otherwise neat uniform indicated that Hovrak must have eaten recently.

Nolaa glided past the long black table in her private chambers. “Are the other representatives here in the caves? The three Diversity Alliance soldiers who have recruited the greatest number of new members?”

“Yes, they just arrived on Ryloth.” The wolfman shuffled his feet, uncertain. “I agree they deserve induction into our inner circle as a reward for their efforts. But are you sure that it’s wise to use our last sample of the plague for so small a demonstration?”

“It isn’t a small demonstration, Adjutant Advisor,” she said. Her remaining head-tail twitched with agitation, making her tattoos ripple. From the folds of her black robes she withdrew a vial that contained the deadly solution. “This spark will ignite the fire of utter loyalty we require.”

Two decades earlier a rebellious nonhuman group, the Alien Combine, had attempted to accomplish goals similar to Nolaa Tarkona’s. But the Alien Combine had been unwilling to take sufficiently extreme actions. Nolaa knew how to learn from mistakes, though, and she vowed that her Diversity Alliance would succeed … no matter what it took.

With the wolfman beside her, she walked into the echoing main grotto to receive her newly promoted followers. The chamber was cool and dim, just the way she liked it. The light was a deep red, as if filtered through panes of bloodstained glass.

Three important Diversity Alliance soldiers stood waiting for her, puffed with pride. Out of all the thousands of members in her political movement, Nolaa had chosen them for this private meeting.

She studied Rullak first, a tentacle-faced Quarren from the ocean world of Calamari. Decades ago, the amphibious Quarren species had collaborated with the Empire to protect their underwater cities, while the more peaceful Mon Calamari were enslaved, their floating cities blasted to ruins. Now, Rullak stood basking in the shadows, rubbing his clammy hands together to distribute the bodily excretions that prevented his skin from drying out.

In the middle, a reptilian Trandoshan named Corrsk loomed silent and ominous, sluggish but powerful. His breath came out in a rasping gargle. The Trandoshans had a long-standing blood feud against Wookiees, and their bounty hunters made a habit of collecting Wookiee pelts. But in uniting alien species to fight the common enemy— humans—Nolaa had managed to secure concessions even from the vicious reptiles. Corrsk had sworn to ignore his natural bloodlust for any Wookiee who adopted the cause of the Diversity Alliance. All others were, of course, fair game.

Finally, on the right stood a wily Devaronian female, Kambrea, whose curving horns, hooded eyes, and pointed fangs gave her narrow face the appearance of a she-devil.

“You three have heard me speak before great crowds, but this demonstration is for your eyes alone,” Nolaa said, and sat down easily in the massive stone chair. On a low pedestal at her left she kept a rough file for sharpening her teeth during idle moments. She toyed with the tool now, running its pointed end under her fingernails.

“This is a private ceremony—a reward for your unwavering service.” Her breath came out in a hiss of anticipation. “What I am about to show you will convince you more than any words I can say.”

“You don’t need to convince us, Esteemed Tarkona,” said Kambrea. The Devaronian female’s bright eyes darted from side to side, as if probing for assassins in the shadows. “We know our cause is just. The weight of human domination has crushed the galaxy for too long. We will follow you wherever the fight may take us.”

“Kill humans!” said Corrsk in a rough voice. Even with this brief statement, the towering reptilian seemed to feel he had said too much.

“I wish to see this demonstration,” the Quarren countered, the tentacles around his mouth quivering. Rullak’s voice bubbled up like words spoken through a drinking tube into polluted water. “I harbor no doubts, Honored Tarkona … but I am certain it will be entertaining.”

Nolaa laughed. “Yes, it will be very entertaining.” She held up the glimmering vial so that reddish light twinkled from its crystal sides. “This vial contains more destructive power than the Death Star—than even the Sun Crusher. Selective destruction.”

The Quarren and the Devaronian sat in anticipation. Nolaa did not know how to interpret Corrsk’s breathy snort.

“You see, the Emperor did more than just create weapons of mass destruction. He had an entire cadre of his finest scientists—humans, but talented nonetheless—working on more insidious schemes. The great biological engineer Evir Derricote created numerous diseases that spread like wildfire through some species, particular species. Recall how non-human peoples suffered during the unleashing of the Krytos plague on Coruscant during the Rebel takeover.”

The three representatives all nodded gravely, remembering the death and terror shortly after the fall of the Emperor.

“I have learned that Derricote also developed an organism more deadly than Krytos, perhaps even as bad as the Death Seed plague. A virus so horrible that Emperor Palpatine himself feared to use it.” She held the vial out toward them. “This contains a sample of that plague.”

The three Diversity Alliance soldiers shifted uneasily and took an instinctive step backward.

Nolaa restrained her smile of self-satisfaction. Good, she had impressed them—but not nearly enough. Her slick robes draped themselves regally around her as she stood, then she took two steps down to the floor of the grotto. The three representatives flicked nervous glances at each other.

Clutching the vial, Nolaa snapped at her Adjutant Advisor. “Hovrak, bring out the prisoner.” Her tattooed head-tail thrashed in anticipation, while the optical sensor implanted in her other tentacle stump gleamed, recording all the details around her.

The wolfman barked a command, and two lumbering Gamorrean guards strode in from a side tunnel, bearing between them the cloaked form of an Imperial guard. Limp scarlet robes hung around him. His bullet-shaped helmet was an impenetrable red mask with only a black vee-slit over his eyes.

“An Imperial guard!” Rullak said, raising his moist hands. “I thought they had all been destroyed.”

“This one had schemes of his own,” Nolaa said. “He and several partners concocted a fake Emperor in hopes that they could rule a Second Imperium in his name, like a gang of thugs—but their plans fell apart when the new Jedi Knights defeated the Shadow Academy. He was the only one to escape.”

The captive struggled, but the piglike Gamorrean security escorts held firm, paying no heed to the Red Guard’s resistance.

Kambrea, the Devaronian, leaned forward and cackled. “Yes, I remember how powerful the Red Guards were. They used to bully us.”

“Kill humans,” Corrsk growled, as if the comment were somehow relevant.

Nolaa stood in front of the scarlet-robed man. “This Red Guard continued to wear this uniform, this mask, to bank on his intimate connections with the former Empire. He went to the fringes of the underworld, hoping to ingratiate himself with certain … criminal elements.” Her head-tail twitched. “For some reason he apparently considered the Diversity Alliance a ‘criminal element.' He didn’t realize just how much hatred alien species still hold against the Empire. And now the tables have turned on him.”

Nolaa leaned closer to the guard, who stood rigidly at attention. “We can still make use of his Imperial knowledge, however.”

“But what about the plague?” the Quarren asked. “When will we see the demonstration you promised?”

Nolaa wrinkled her brow. “Though the Emperor had no intention of ever unleashing it, he could not bring himself to destroy such an efficient, useful tool. So he ordered it stored in a hidden weapons depot on a small asteroid station. Then he erased the depot’s coordinates from Imperial archives, so that no one knew where the stockpile of his terrible virus lay hidden.

“Most of the surviving Imperials have been scattered by now, but this one ranked high, close to Palpatine himself. I presume he knows the location of the plague storehouse. I have asked him to direct me there so that the Diversity Alliance may commandeer these valuable resources….” Nolaa ran her clawed hand along the polished plasteel of the Red Guard’s helmet. He flinched. “But he has declined our offer.” She flicked a glance back at the three spectators. “So far.”

She held up the tiny vial in front of the Red Guard’s eye slit. “Tell me where the rest is stored. This is your final chance.”

The Red Guard’s helmet swung from side to side in mute defiance.

Nolaa heaved a sigh. “Very well, then, face the consequences.” She dropped the crystalline vial to the stone floor of the cave. With barely disguised relish, Nolaa stamped down and crushed it with her booted foot, exposing the viral solution to the open air.

The three spectators staggered backward. Gasping in horror, they scrambled to cover their mouths and nostrils and tried—unsuccessfully—not to breathe. Confused, the Gamorrean guards blinked stupidly down at the broken vial, wondering if they should clean it up.

Nolaa Tarkona merely watched.

The Red Guard lunged and writhed in a violent attempt to escape the Gamorreans’ grasp—but the seizure rapidly became something else entirely. His body trembled. He bucked convulsively.

“You may release him,” Nolaa said. “There’s no longer any danger.” The piglike guards looked at each other, shrugged, then stomped away.

The captive sank to his knees, shaking. His gloved hands pawed at his chest, his stomach. The three honored Diversity Alliance soldiers stood back against the wall of the grotto, staring in fascinated horror.

The Imperial guard’s chest heaved. Gurgling sounds came from beneath the scarlet helmet, as if he were trying to suck in lungfuls of air but only managed to inhale viscous saliva.

His gloved hands reached up to grasp his smooth helmet, fumbled with the hidden catch. His arms shook and his feet tapped against the floor as the plague flowed like molten lead through every nerve in his body.

Above the noise of his rasping and retching for breath, Nolaa could hear the clasp of the helmet come loose. The Red Guard’s hands clutched the glossy plasteel and pulled. His body arched. The helmet lifted just a little, not quite revealing the guard’s face—then he sagged into a limp pile of scarlet cloth.

“Impressive,” Hovrak said with a growl, his long tongue licking the points of his canine teeth.

“Even better than I had hoped.” Nolaa turned to the three still-frightened Diversity Alliance observers. “You see, the plague was developed to be DNA-specific. It affects only victims with a human genetic structure. Aliens are immune. All of us here are breathing the same air, moving in the same room—yet the disease struck down only this pitiful Red Guard, while the rest of us went about our business unaffected.”

“But,” Kambrea said, gradually inching forward, “why would the Emperor develop such a thing? Humans were his subjects.”

“True,” Nolaa answered, “but many were also Rebels. Palpatine intended to unleash this plague to quash insurrections on colony worlds—until he realized how easily it could spread. One carrier from world to world might break a quarantine—and within weeks this disease could have made his Empire a galaxy-wide charnel house.”

At Nolaa’s gesture of dismissal the Gamorreans came forward, grabbed the Red Guard’s body, and dragged him by his scarlet sleeves across the stone floor. Once they turned down a side passage and out of sight, Nolaa heard the Red Guard’s helmet clatter to the flagstones. The Gamorreans grumbled and snorted, blaming each other for the accident, then one apparently snatched up the helmet again. They continued dragging their victim away to where he could be disposed of.

“You mean to spread this plague?” Corrsk asked. “Kill all the humans?”

Nolaa crossed her arms over her chest. “Wouldn’t that be the proper work of the Diversity Alliance?”

Rullak leaned forward, facial tentacles quivering. “How did you obtain this sample, Esteemed Tarkona? And where may we get more?”

She stepped up onto the dais, where she slumped back into her stone chair. Hovrak stood quietly beside her, letting Nolaa do the talking.

“A scavenger named Fonterrat stumbled upon the secret depot where this plague is stored. He stole two small samples, not entirely realizing what he had found, and brought the vials to me, along with a description of the facility. But Fonterrat was suspicious and greedy. He cited an outrageous price. I quibbled with him.

“Because only Fonterrat knew the location of the depot, he was afraid I might torture him for the information. Of course, the Diversity Alliance would never harm a fellow alien.” She smiled sweetly. “Humans are our only targets.

“Fonterrat requested that I send an emissary to a neutral location. There, my emissary would hand him a time-locked container holding his enormous fee. He, in turn, would deliver his entire navicomputer module, the only repository of the plague depot’s coordinates.”

She tapped her long fingernails on the arm of her chair. “It seemed a safe enough arrangement for all concerned. It amused me to enlist a human emissary to do my dirty work. Such delicious irony. I chose Bornan Thul, an arrogant merchant, who seemed to think he owned the galaxy.

“Thul met with Fonterrat on the ancient world of Kuar. They presumably made the exchange and went their separate ways—but Bornan Thul never delivered the navicomputer to me. He must have figured out what he had been given, what the module contained, and so he chose to disappear. Thul never arrived at the Shumavar trade conference where we were to have consummated our deal.”

Nolaa folded her hands together, wearing a perplexed expression. “Oddly, he hasn’t gone to the New Republic either. Perhaps he assumes that the Diversity Alliance has infiltrated the government on Coruscant. And of course we have.”

She tapped her other fingers on the opposite arm of her chair. “Unfortunately, since Fonterrat didn’t trust me enough to make the deal directly, and since my human go-between betrayed me, I still haven’t retrieved the information I paid for. I had my joke on Fonterrat, though. In the sealed locker containing his fee, I placed one of his plague samples. As soon as he unsealed the time-locked box to study his reward, a device secretly cracked open the vial. Since Fonterrat was immune to the disease, he didn’t even know that his ship was full of the plague organism when he landed on the isolated human colony of Gammalin.”

Nolaa smiled, looking up at Hovrak with her rose-quartz eyes. “Everyone on Gammalin is now dead. Unfortunately, no one managed to leave the colony to spread the virus. The plague organism doesn’t survive long in open air without a host, and so Gammalin did not prove to be a proper flash point for the plague. Regrettable …”

The three spectators now came forward, eyes gleaming. The Trandoshan scooped up a few broken shards from the plague vial. He brought them to his blunt nose and sniffed with great interest.

“So how are we to obtain an adequate stockpile of this weapon to aid us in our fight against oppression?” Kambrea asked, brushing a hand across her smooth horns. “This was your last sample, and Bornan Thul has disappeared with the knowledge of where the rest is stored.”

“It is merely a setback,” Nolaa said. “I have offered a large enough reward that every bounty hunter in the galaxy is trying to bring Thul to me. He won’t be able to move anywhere without someone capturing him.”

She stroked her tattooed head-tail, feeling the tingle of response from her sensitive nerve endings. “It’s only a matter of time.”